Education Quote by Zhang Yimou

The compliment lands with the faint thud of a gate being kept. On its face, Zhang Yimou is offering praise: Ang Lee is internationally legible, professionally polished, able to operate in the global film economy. But the sentence is built like a passport check, where “educated in the West” and “his English is good” become credentials that validate a Chinese director to an implied Western standard.

That’s the subtext: talent is not quite enough; fluency and Western training are the real proof of seriousness. It’s a revealing hierarchy, one that mirrors the ’90s and early-2000s festival circuit in which Asian auteurs were often rewarded when their work traveled with a familiar accent. Lee’s career - from Sense and Sensibility to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - embodies a kind of cultural code-switching that Western institutions (studios, critics, awards bodies) know how to reward. Zhang’s wording inadvertently spotlights that machinery.

Coming from Zhang, the line also carries a quiet self-positioning. He’s the director long framed as “visually sumptuous,” “traditionally Chinese,” sometimes treated as an exporter of national spectacle. By emphasizing Lee’s Western education and English, Zhang marks a distinction between two lanes of global recognition: one earned through stylistic exoticism, the other through seamless integration into Western professional norms.

The remark isn’t just about Ang Lee. It’s about what the world asks of non-Western artists before it calls them great: translate yourself, literally and culturally, then we’ll listen.